Bummer: Microsoft DSL Tools only for VS 2005 beta

There seems to be a buzz lately about using Domain Specific Languages (DSL) to enhance software development by abstracting concepts of your particular software or industry domain into a custom tiny language. Although the concept has been around for decades and seems to be everywhere in Unix world (remember Lex and YACC?), the push seems to be coming from a source that I personally would not expect: Microsoft.

Microsoft is attempting to bring in DSLs into the mainstream by introducing their Domain-Specific Language Tools. The problem is that these tools are for Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2, which I do not have. What I do not get about Microsoft is that the current version of the Visual Studio IDE allows for extensions. So why don’t they have them for the current version and get developers in the market using DSLs faster?

Well, it’s not like I cannot experiment with DSLs any further. Like I said, DSLs are not new, and anyone can create one using various open source and GNU tools.